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Tag: meaning

Empathy is one of humanity’s best qualities. And it can also be the most neglected. When insurmountable obstacles confront a community, understanding and compassion from neighbors is often just enough to pull them through.

But what if the obstacle is something few can understand? What if it’s trauma from a perplexing and complicated war?

Earlier this year, ArtsWestchester featured Tim O’Brien’s war novel The Things They Carried as part of The Big Read, a program designed to encourage reading in communities nationwide. Attempting to increase in understanding and compassion, O’Brien’s partially-autobiographical work was intentionally chosen by ArtsWestchester so that readers could encounter some of the issues our servicemen and women face.

O’Brien himself explains that the similarities between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam are not primarily political, but human:

“Obviously there are differences [between the war in Iraq and Vietnam]” he said, “chief among them the absence of the draft. But there are enough similarities. These are wars in which there are no uniforms, no front, no rear. Who’s the enemy? What do you shoot back at? Whom do you trust? At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.”

Distancing his work from politics, O’Brien’s writing and public comments have continuously centered on the personal nature of war and its effect on individuals and relationships. Even in Hollywood, a move has begun from the mere “reenactment of battles” towards the personal.

While a war may be considered justifiable, the negative impact combat has upon the human soul is poorly understood. O’Brien attempts to draw out the truths of this impact by issuing his readers into the experience.

Rather than merely recounting events, O’Brien modifies the “facts” of his own memories, shifts the chronology of the story and emphasizes mystery and confusion, forcing his readers to emotionally face the psychological shock of his experience.

He explains his technique in TheThings They Carried by distinguishing between happening-truth and story-truth. The former pertains solely to facts, whereas the latter attends to emotional truth and the pursuit of meaning.

The two “types of truth” seem pretty clear. Yet literary critic Tobey C. Herzog reports that O’Brien blurs the lines not merely in his writing but also in his public life.

In front of an audience at Wabash College, while O’Brien elaborated on an event depicted in his book, he allowed listeners to assume that the details he related were actually true. Because The Things They Carried is based on his life, the audience implicitly believed (without evidence to the contrary) that the events O’Brien described had actually transpired:

. . . O’Brien paused as the Wabash audience nodded knowingly at the story’s conclusion: Tim O’Brien had chosen to enter the army, to fight, and not to flee across the river into Canada. Then, after a dramatic pause, O’Brien confessed: the story was made up . . . the incidents on the Rainy River, so realistically described, simply did not occur in O’Brien’s own life.

According to Herzog, O’Brien argues that this deception introduces audiences to “the complex intermingling of facts, fiction, truth, lies, memory, and imagination . . .” The realization of abstract truth is “truer” than facts; the human element deeper than the form.

O’ Brien recognizes that human beings empathize best when they share in other’s experiences. Since fictionalized stories convey abstract truths in a noticeably defined way than mere reporting, his work uniquely functions by “cutting to the chase.” He forces us to view trauma in war on a deeply personal level by rapidly putting us in uncomfortable positions as we read.

Many listeners in the Wabash audience were understandably offended by O’Brien’s trick, wanting to hear his “actual war-related experiences,” instead of grossly elaborated ones.

But at this time in our nation’s history, as we watch our friends and family go off on their tour of duty, seeking understanding of their war experiences may be one of the most compassionate thing we can do. O’Brien’s story-truth brings to light some of these experiences and ushers us into emotional realities otherwise inaccessible to civilians. ‘

Before the birth of “TV,” 18th Century British author Samuel Johnson once argued that a story was only truly superior if it was a faithful “mirror of nature.” He said:

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile . . . but the pleasure of sudden wonder is soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.

If television is a medium for stories, Johnson’s argument applies to what is displayed on the tube. Many of us enjoy watching Glee, for example, for its glamour and musical skill. But unless we spot in the characters something that matches our own human experience, fanciful invention will sooner or later cease to inspire us. This is perhaps the reason, as adults, we are unable to watch the cartoons of our youth. Looney Toons, somewhere along the way, ceased to inspire our imaginations. Our life experiences made us too large for the sort of entertainment it offers.

Yet despite entertainment purposes, television can offer rare moments of truth that challenge us intellectually and morally.

Take last week’s episode of Fringe, for example. For all its scientific intrigue and suspense, the relationship between main character Walter Bishop and antagonist Dr. Alistair Peck makes it one of the best of the season.

Their shared position as great men of science, and Walter’s personal experiences, allows Walter the ability to identify with Peck and his desire to resurrect his fiancé through the means of science. Unlike the government agents who merely seek to thwart Peck’s intentions, Walter is the only person capable of connecting to him, and consequently, the only one able to articulate the moral challenges that stem from his desire.

The two actors made [the story] riveting, particularly when Walter confronted Peck man-to-man. In their exchange, where Walter warned Peck that changing the past only leads to more problems, Fringe had one of those rare moments where you got the sense that Walter was talking to someone at his own level. Perhaps not surprisingly, that kinship inspired this devoted man of science to admit to Peck that his rescuing of the alternate-universe Peter made him believe in God for the first time.

The scene is embedded below:

Moments like this are compelling not because Walter expresses what might be the beginnings of faith in God, but because his struggle between human loss and his human limitations are brought to light in a way that every viewer can understand.

Walter also recognizes that there are boundaries to human ambition within science, especially when it comes to human lives. This particular theme cycles again and again throughout the series and it is one we as viewers should grapple with as we live in a culture steeped in scientific aspirations.

But even while entrenched within a plot beyond many of our own personal experiences, we see a familiar struggle fixed in human relationships and sacrificial love for those dearest to us.

As I continue to watch, I am amazed to what depth writers will take their viewers. This may be a result of the fact that, as Dylan Peterson says, “America runs on Jesus.” Yet apart from an explicit Christian context, in order to be “good art,” to tell good stories, television shows must truthfully mirror life.

It must depict humanity’s most basic needs and desires by telling stories we can all relate to. Shows like Fringe remind us of what it means to be human.

Television may be bad for my health, but excellent scripts? Good for my humanity.